Five short stories inspired by the American writer H. P. Lovecraft, creator and acknowledged master of the genre of Cosmic Horror.

“Cuitiliú”: Did the Great Old Ones ever walk in Ireland? Did they have something to do with what happened at Devil’s Cliff? The forgotten pages of Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin’s Diary may hold the answers.

“The Call of the Stars”: His father left him a packet of mysterious Irish manuscripts, and when Máirtín Mac Cuarta read them, he felt the stars call to him.

“The Book of Poison”: Finnish student Panu Höglund only wanted to read old books to learn the Irish language, but then one was sent to him that had an ancient poison in it.

“The Midnight Worm in Ikaalinen” is at the heart of this collection: a prize-winning story by the Finnish philosopher S. Albert Kivinen. In this story, Kivinen describes a cosmic monster who made its nest in Ikaalinen, a small market town in Western Finland—the home town of the writer himself.

“Paappana, or Erkki Santanen’s Music”: Club music drew hundreds of young people to the decaying suburb. But what black destiny was waiting for them in the cellar below?

S. Albert Kivinen was the pioneer who introduced Lovecraft to Finnish readers of fantasy. He spent many years lecturing on philosophical theories in Helsinki University, and his research was focused mostly on ontology.

Panu Petteri Höglund spent many years making an intensive study of native speakers of Irish until he could tell stories in a style of Irish that had the right flavour. This collection is a translation of his second book of short stories written in Irish.